The Taiwan High Court’s Taichung Branch yesterday rejected an appeal in a case of sexual assault on girls at an elementary school in Taichung, upholding a 10-year, six-month prison sentence for the defendant, a man surnamed Hung (洪).
The Taichung District Court in March found Hung guilty of sexual assault involving three girls in Grade 5 aged 10 and 11.
Hung appealed the verdict, seeking a reduced term on the grounds that the girls consented to his actions, as they had not tried to run away.
The High Court rejected Hung’s argument.
“Even if the victims did not resist or yell as the offenses were committed, it would still be a crime to force sex upon the victims as long as their free will and right to decide were suppressed,” the High Court said in its ruling.
Investigators said that Hung was hired as an assistant basketball coach at the school from 2014 to last year while he was an undergraduate university student.
One of the girls, known as Siao Ching (小晴), testified that Hung asked her to stay behind after practice, telling her she needed chiropractic adjustment of her pelvic region.
He later pulled down her underwear and groped her genitals, prosecutors said.
On separate occasions, Hung followed Siao Ching into washrooms and fondled her, prosecutors said.
Hung groped Siao Ching 17 times, penetrating her with his fingers on four occasions, prosecutors said, adding that they also charged him on 13 counts of indecent behavior.
Hung offered candy to another girl, which he fed her using his mouth, and he kissed her on one occasion, prosecutors said.
He took her to a washroom nine times, penetrating her on three occasions and groping her on the other occasions, they said.
The High Court said in its verdict that Hung used his position of authority to take advantage of the girls and it therefore denied the request for leniency.
The High Court cited the #MeToo movement, which encourages victims not to stay silent and report sexual assault or harassment.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching